Solar gain causes significant thermal management challenges for wearable electronic devices such as, for example, head-mounted display (HMD) devices that are exposed to solar radiation during operation. For example, in wearable electronic devices having a housing that encloses heat-emitting electronic components, the housing itself serves the thermal management function of passively dissipating some, or even all, of the heat that is internally emitted by the enclosed electronic components. When operating under indoor and/or nighttime conditions, solar gain may have little or no effect on the rate at which the housing passively dissipates the heat emitted by the electronic components into the surrounding environment. However, when operating under outdoor and daytime conditions, solar gain significantly impairs this heat transfer rate since the absorption of incident solar radiation continually increases the thermal energy of the housing.
The rate at which the housing experiences solar gain due to sun exposure directly reduces the rate at which the housing is able to passively dissipate heat that is emitted within the housing. In some cases, solar gain may prevent a wearable electronic device from dissipating internally emitted heat at a fast-enough rate to maintain allowable temperatures. For example, many electronic devices are designed continually measure internal temperatures and to throttle performance or even automatically shut down if these measured temperatures exceed predefined threshold. Thus, solar gain can significantly impair the performance of wearable electronic devices and, in some cases, can even render such devices inoperable due to extreme temperatures.
It is with respect to these and other considerations that the disclosure made herein is presented.